“That’s self-evident,” said Wendover. “A murderer’s bound to have been on the spot when he committed his murder.”
“Not necessarily,” Sir Clinton contradicted at once. “A poisoner needn’t be near his victim when the victim dies. He might have sent poisoned chocolates by post or something like that. But he must have had the opportunity of committing the crime, whether he was on the spot or not. You couldn’t have accused Robinson Crusoe in a poisoned chocolates case; he was outside the postal radius.”
Wendover nodded in agreement.
“But in this particular case at the Maze,” he commented, “it’s pretty plain that the murderer was on the spot all right. The person who killed the Shandons was somebody who was in or near the Maze between three and four o’clock this afternoon.”
Sir Clinton passed to his second point.
“Method is the next thing. It’s an axiom that the more ordinary the method of killing is, the more difficult it is to spot the murderer. Suppose you find a body in a by-street and it turns out that the man has been stabbed to death. What have you to go on? Not much. But if you find somebody poisoned with some fairly out-of-the-way alkaloid, then you limit the number of possible murderers very considerably. You remember the Crippen case. Divergence from the normal is the weakest link in a murderer’s chainmail.”
“Well, you ought to be happy in this affair. You’ve got a sufficiently out-of-the-way method.”
“That’s so,” Sir Clinton admitted. “But what you gain on the swings you sometimes lose on the roundabouts, you know. The method in this case was one that either a man or a woman could have used. Even a child can pull a trigger. That extends the range a bit.”
“But a child would need to have had the chance of getting at the curare.”
“And the curare has been lying open to anyone for the last year or two. Don’t forget that.”
“Then you think it was the stuff up at the house that was used?”
“I don’t think anything about it at present. All I wanted was to shut off that possible source of supply.”
“Then you must be expecting more murders?”
Sir Clinton appeared not to hear the query.
“Suppose we come to motives now. Barring very exceptional cases, there are really only five motives that make it worth while to commit murder: women, money, revenge, fear, and homicidal mania. And I should think that in most cases if you go deep enough you’d find either women or money at the back of the business.”
Wendover reflected for a time, evidently conning over the possibilities.
“It doesn’t seem to be women this time, so far as things have gone,” he suggested at last.
Sir Clinton refused to be drawn.
“I must confess,” he said, “that I have a sneaking admiration for the Shandons’ murderer—at least so far as his brains go. Could you imagine a better place for murder than the Maze? Absolute privacy guaranteed by the nature of the affair. No one could see through those hedges. The murderer can creep up to within lethal distance, come almost face to face with his victim, and yet remain absolutely invisible. And when the job’s done, he can sneak off in perfect safety. No one can swear to seeing him. If he’s found in the Maze, he can explain that he heard a cry for help and rushed to assist. It was a brainy lad who hit on that locale for his crime.”
Wendover thought he had put his finger on a weak spot.
“But that limits the number of possible murderers still further, surely. It would need to be a fellow who knew the Maze intimately, otherwise he’d have got tied up in it.”
Sir Clinton smiled a trifle derisively.
“Didn’t you hear me inquire about that at Whistlefield? The Maze is open day and night. Anyone could learn all about it, and no one would be much the wiser, since it’s in an outlying part of the grounds. A man could come up the river in a boat, drop into it, and cut a whole series of private marks on the hedges to guide him to the centre—bend twigs or something like that, which wouldn’t give away the fact that he’d been at work. Or he could even bring in a thread and trail it behind him to help him out again, and roll it up as he retreated. No, you can’t bank much on that point, Squire.”
“Well, who did it, then?” demanded Wendover, exasperated by the upsetting of his idea.
Sir Clinton looked up with something suspiciously like a grin on his face.
“It might have been anybody,” he said, oracularly. “But it seems more likely that it was somebody, if you catch my meaning.”
Wendover betrayed no pique at this indirect discomfiture.
“One doesn’t get much out of you, that’s clear,” he responded ruefully.
Sir Clinton seemed to feel that he might say something further without breaking through his self-imposed limitations.
“What’s wrong with your outlook on the business, Squire, is that you want to treat a real crime as if it were a bit clipped out of a detective novel. In a ’tec yarn, you get everything nicely sifted for you. The author puts down only things that are relevant to the story. If he didn’t select his materials, his book would be far too long and no one would have the patience to plough through it. The result is that the important clues are thrown up as if they had a spotlight on them, if the reader happens to have any intelligence.”
He paused to light a cigarette before he continued.
“In real life,” he went on, “there
